Transitioning

Day 7.

Today was the day we had to leave New York for Boston. I cannot sufficiently describe how much I love New York to people and how much I loved the apartment and company I had had for the past week. It was so sad to leave. I feared that it wouldn't be the same in Boston, that our perfect holiday was ending. In a way I guess that it was but in having this one weekend in slightly less-perfect circumstances helped eased the transition.

That morning, I threw biped out of the bathroom hissing “do you want breakfast?!” at her. It was an attempt to be threatening but it probably came off petulant or just weird. Biped let me in and I was ready for the world by quarter to eight. Amy and I set off on our final brioche run. Well, brioche skip. We like skipping.

We bought our goodies (this was the day of the mandarin brioche as well as apple and raisin and chocolate) and on the way to the subway I saw one of those newspaper containers with The Onion inside for free. I grabbed one and Amy and I got back to the apartment around 9am. We needed to be ready to hand over the keys to the apartment at 10am but this was plenty of time for us to devour everything. Soon we had put the entire apartment to rights (and set our final dishwasher load going) and were on the streets.

We stood in front of the house on West 130th Street with our many bags, remembering the good times we had. When they come to do the film of this (or maybe Broadway musical) this would be a great moment to do flashbacks, a little reprise of Once More With Feeling, futon maiming, lying on daisy’s curtain-covered sofa-bed singing Queen, Q’s marathon showers, biped’s melodious snores… The scene would end on the freshly-set cement outside the apartment in which someone etched “Hobblings 06”.

We trundled or carried our bags to the subway and then got off at 42nd Street for Port Authority. We were very early but given how long it took each of us to go to the toilet and buy some lunch, it was fine. We took some seats in what passed for a waiting area and had a loud conversation about comics. The fun was both in Em’s ability to summarise Marvel’s Civil War in a handful of words and the way in which we discussed it seriously, talking about the war and clones and registration as if they were current events. We started off being surrounded by people. They soon left. We also passed The Onion around, a brilliant issue.

The bus journey set off at 12:30 and didn’t get into Boston until nearly 6pm. Amy and I sat near the front of the bus (to help me travel- I do not know if this works, but I do know that much of travel sickness is in the mind anyway so as long as I believe sitting near the front works, I will continue to do it). The film was Chicken Little, watchable if… odd. When we passed Stamford, Connecticut (where Civil War began), I leapt up and careered down the bus to the back where Em was just to point it out. Otherwise, the journey was uneventful (and sporadically filled with traffic jams and also phone calls to Massachusetts Hobblings) and I slept. We had a quick break at some awful fast-food joint (“Roy Rogers” I think) where Q discovered bad American fries.

As we came into Boston, I was struck with how the city had changed. The roads were either elevated or in tunnels. The traffic, once in the city, was quite good. When I was last there, Boston lay exposed thanks to the Big Dig. We came into South Station and started replacing the word “subway” with “T” as we took the red line and then the orange line to Sullivan Square. From there we squeezed onto a very busy bus (fortunately run by the same people as the T so our passes worked). The instructions were to get off at Church Street after five minutes but after ten minutes passed and the announcement for “Church Street” had never come, someone asked for help with our stop. A kind local informed us when to get off and we found ourselves on a random street in the town of Everett. There was no more than a moment’s panic before we found Church Street and did the trundling and carrying up to the Prescott International Hostel.

It took us ages to get checked in. The lady on the desk was confused by the way the seven of us were under two bookings and had in fact, before cancellations from jes and Rian, been nine. Years later, we were checked into two rooms of four beds. Amy and I were checked in last and came up the stairs to find sus sitting forlorn on her suitcase as the others had voted her out of their room and into the second one. The three of us found our room complete with shower-room and television. I made sus take the top bunk with the plastic mattress as I figured she needed the plastic more than me while Amy had the other set of bunks to herself and nabbed the lower one. Q came in to see our setup and her jaw dropped as she declared our hovel to be huge. She called dibs on the bed above Amy (which unfortunately lacked a ladder) as the others poked their heads in and cursed at our good luck.

After our session of musical beds, we went out to dinner. Amy and I had inquired about places when we checked in and were told about an excellent Brazilian barbeque place. Following directions, we found an absolute dump with food looking worse than college canteen and everyone in it looking depressed. We scurried out and looked further up the road. There was a Sport’s Bar (which is like every other American bar in my experience but with better food). We went in and found ourselves the only people eating. The seven of us took the large table in the restaurant part and looked at the menu. It was vast and mainly comfort foods like mashed potato with garlic and macaroni and cheese. I opted for the turkey dinner. We got a bottle of red wine to share around (we needed two in retrospect) and had a great time. The waitress was very interested in us, asking where we were from and being intrigued by the variety of answers.

The evening meal was so good it seemed a shame to end the night but somehow we ended up at the hostel checking emails and board posts (seeing the terrible pictures of us singing on certain blogs and also Emano’s odd comment that when she had phoned me earlier, she expected me to have an American accent) and then retiring to our room to watch Doctor Who. We saw the Christmas Invasion and most of New Earth. Watching Q watching Who was fun. She had the most transfixed look on her face, utter joy.